


ozymandias

by acertainheight



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/F, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-10 18:45:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10444749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acertainheight/pseuds/acertainheight
Summary: Isabela takes the relic and never looks back; Hawke pours herself into the art of forgetting. Years later, miles from Kirkwall, they walk into the same tavern and both stop running.





	

Hawke can feel her before she can see her.

It’s always been like that with Isabela, of course, from the first night their paths ever crossed until the very last. Hawke’s always had some—some unshakable _sense_ of her. Like a beacon buried in her chest, tugging them together across every room and every battlefield. But it’s different this time, because this is the first time Hawke’s felt that familiar ache in five years.

Not that she’s been counting.

The very air in the tavern is thick with the sense of her, something sharp and familiar above the smell of sour ale and seawater. Hawke stands in the doorway, feet too leaden to let her escape, and peers into the darkness of the room. She can feel Isabela’s presence like a knife in her back, and there’s no room inside her to feel anything else at all.

The tavern door still hangs open behind Hawke; her fingers still rest against the rough-hewn wood, holding it open in a hovering in-between. But she can't tear her gaze away from the smoky room. She can't slow her racing mind long enough to summon up the common sense to turn around and run. _Five years,_ she thinks. She’s had this dream before, but it’s never felt like this.

And then a brash peal of laughter slides across the tavern, snakes up Hawke’s leg to wrap itself around her heart, and squeezes the breath out of her. The door slams shut. Unconsciously, Hawke presses back against the doorframe as if it is her only anchor to this earth. It’s all she can do to stare.

There, in the furthest corner, Isabela sits perched in a man's lap—his big hands on her bare thighs—alight with laughter, her head tipped back and her hand sliding down his back towards his coin-purse. Hawke almost can’t comprehend the sight of her, almost can’t wrap her mind around the fact that she’s real—that she was ever real. But there she is, hair cascading over her shoulders from beneath that same blue scarf, the same knives on her back, the same feeling of dazed awe threatening to drown Hawke right there.

That's when Isabela looks over her shoulder. As their eyes meet, Hawke can feel that dagger in her back dig in a little deeper.

A sharp-eyed familiar fear gleams in Isabela's face even from across the room, that old fight-or-flight, and Hawke sends up a silent plea to every god she knows by name. _Flee,_ she begs, _let her flee, let her be consistent for once in her life._ She can’t bear to see her, to hear her voice prove her real; she can’t be sure what might come out of her own mouth.

But of course, Isabela has never listened to Hawke. She extricates herself from the man and the crowded corner, and then she begins the trek across the room. With each of her steps, the heavy weight of five years lowers on Hawke’s chest.

When at last Isabela stands inches away from her, a moment of silence hangs between them—as if they hadn’t had all these years to come up with something to say. She looks so much older, Hawke thinks, staring at the soft creases of laughter at the corner of eyes still copper-bright. She looks beautiful. She looks like a dream.

“What are you doing here?” Isabela asks at last. Her voice is accusatory, unfamiliar in its sharpness.

“I wasn't looking for you,” Hawke says. It's the truth, but it tastes like a lie in her mouth. All those years Merrill spent telling her that the heart’s a compass, and Hawke’s never believed her until right now.

“Then what?”

Hawke shrugs. It’s easier than she expected to pretend like she doesn't want to collapse on the floor. “I may have started a war, gone on the run, the usual. Thought I might grab a drink.”

“And some stroke of bad luck brought you right here?”

“Mine or yours?”

Isabela laughs without a trace of humor in it. “Mine. Or both.”

Once, every word between them had been so easy. Once, they might have laughed at their luck if their paths crossed unplanned. And then Isabela got her relic and disappeared, and Hawke spent five years trying to fit her mind around the idea that for Isabela, every minute in Kirkwall had always been just a stroke of bad luck. Every reply Hawke can think of turns to ashes on her tongue. She wraps her arms about her chest, takes one shaky breath, and hurls her heart all bloody and battered out on the floor between them: “Why did you leave?”

Isabela inhales, her eyes darting like a cornered animal. “What?”

“Why did you leave?”

“I—I was always going to leave. I had to,” Isabela says. She falters, wordless and dark-eyed, for one moment before her gaze hardens again. “I warned you. You could have listened.”

Hawke swallows. “Why didn’t you come back?”

Isabela goes dead-silent for a long minute, and Hawke starts to think that they both might stand there frozen for all the rest of their lives, waiting for someone to say a word and release them both. But at last, without once meeting Hawke’s eyes, Isabela answers. “I thought—you wouldn't want me to come back, once I was gone. Not after I left like that.”

Hawke stares at her, half angry and half bewildered, all her resolute wounded certainty crumbling to dust. _I missed you more than I could hold in my heart,_ she wants to say. _I missed you more than the whole city could hold and I've spent years trying to find somewhere vast enough to fit my sorrow. I would have died for you. I loved you. I forgave you._  But she bites it all back and shakes her head instead. “Nothing was ever the same without you.”

“Maybe you were better off that way.” She purses her lips, looking uncertain, and changes direction. “There were reports from Kirkwall last year—I wasn't sure if you were alive, if everyone we knew—”

“All of us made it out,” Hawke says, and Isabela's shoulders sag in something like relief. Now it’s Hawke's turn to hesitate. She’d give everything she has, everything she’s ever had, for some small glimpse inside Isabela's mind. “Have you been here this whole time?”

“This particular bar?” Isabela asks, and they both smile—just slightly. “No. And the same goes for the city. Given the circumstances, I try not to stay anywhere long. I only just arrived.”

“That’s some coincidence,” Hawke says.

“Well, we've both always had an eye for the shittiest taverns in Thedas.”

Hawke wants to laugh, but she can’t get it out over the sudden crush of long-buried memories: Isabela beside her in the Hanged Man, whispering in her ear, kissing her as sweet as sunshine. It had all been so easy. These days, that wild joy feels so alien that Hawke almost can’t recognize the memories as her own—like something from childhood, or another life. Whoever they were then, Hawke thinks, there’s hardly anything left of them. Nothing's so simple now.

“It's been a long time,” Hawke manages, not sure how to say the rest of it.

Isabela nods. “Too long to go back, I think.”

“Should we—?”

“Say our goodbyes.” 

“And then get on with our lives?”

“Don't you think that's best? We don’t know each other, Hawke. Not anymore. It wouldn't do us any good to play pretend and trade small talk all night.”

Hawke thinks that maybe she’s right, that it's better to keep their memories untouched by this uneasy reality. They’ve spent too many years racing away from the past to fall back into it now; surely there’s nothing left to salvage from the wreck, not now that they’ve turned into strangers who stare at each other with nothing to say. They've both always been the all-or-nothing type. This interminable in-between—it isn't them. They can't let it be them.

And so Hawke takes a breath and nods. “Best of luck,” she says. “With everything.” Somehow, she manages to turn towards the door.

“Wait—Hawke.”

At the last second, the call rings out and Hawke twists back—that old beacon in her heart jerking her right back again at the slightest of offerings, any thread of hope transfigured into a lifeline. Isabela’s staring at her with a look Hawke’s never seen before. “Let me kiss you goodbye,” she says, slowly. “I didn’t get the chance last time.”

Hawke’s heart rattles in her chest. A wise woman might say no, she thinks. But no one could say that Hawke’s ever been wise when it comes to Isabela. She steps back into the tug of Isabela’s gravity and reaches for her like an anchor.

It’s never been just a kiss, not with them. The first brush of their lips is uncertain, fumbling, awkward enough to be embarrassing if it wasn’t the only thing Hawke’s wanted in years. But it only takes an instant for the ease of memory to come rushing back, and then Isabela’s hands are in Hawke’s hair and Hawke’s hands are on Isabela’s waist and they’re up against the wall of the bar—

“I have a room upstairs,” Isabela breathes, hot against Hawke’s neck. She draws back an inch, tilting her head back to look at Hawke with a dizzying intensity. “One last time, in honor of who we were. And then we say goodbye.”

Hawke knows the rules. She knows what it means to say goodbye. She nods despite it all. One last chance to stumble towards closure—one last chance to get this all out of her system, or to find out that she never can.

They drift upstairs like they’re walking through a dream, the same dream Hawke has had a thousand times before: Isabela leading the way through the halls and Hawke following her, always following her, trembling from the fear that one wrong step might make her disappear. Isabela pauses at the furthest door, her hand on the knob, and turns those eyes on Hawke again. “You’re sure?” she asks.

It’s nothing like what it was, Hawke thinks. Everything is wrong: this country, this place, Isabela’s question. But it can be enough.

“I’m sure,” she says, following Isabela through the door. It only takes them a moment to fall into bed together, so entangled that they might have never been apart.

Hawke’s fingers shake like leaves as she tries to undo the ties of Isabela’s corset, like her very muscles and tendons have forgotten everything they once knew so well—the secret to these laces, the body she’d once thought she knew as well as her own. When at last Isabela sits bare before her, an ugly sob tears halfway out of Hawke’s throat before she silences it with her lips against Isabela’s neck.

“You’re so beautiful,” she manages, barely more than a croak, pulling away again. Kissing her feels half a blessing and half a sin.

Isabela’s face is unreadable, her eyes soaking up all the light in the room, deep pools Hawke could drown in if she tried. She touches Hawke’s cheek for an instant and then withdraws her fingertips; only then does Hawke glimpse the tremor in Isabela’s hand, too, before she pulls it back to her side. “You’re only saying that because you’ve forgotten how I looked back then,” she says at last, with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

Hawke’s shaking her head before Isabela can finish. “I didn’t forget,” she says. She couldn’t forget, not a single freckle or a single scar. There are different scars now, some silvered and one on her shoulder still pink enough to make Hawke’s heart twist with a defensive fury, and Isabela's harder than she’d been after those easy years in Kirkwall, some of the softness of her body turned to the hard iron of a fugitive—but she’s as beautiful now as she’s ever been, more beautiful simply for _existing_. To forget Isabela would be like forgetting her own name.

Isabela swallows visibly and shifts on the bed. “Well,” she says airily, “my ass was better then, at least.”

Hawke can’t help but smile. For a moment, she can almost see them the way they were then. “I think your ass looks perfectly fine.”

“Some compliment,” Isabela sniffs. And something like a smile glints in her eyes, too. She reaches for the hem of Hawke’s tunic and tugs her closer.

Hawke tries to interrupt, tries to catch her wrists to stop her, but Isabela’s always been too fast for her. She pulls Hawke’s tunic over her head, tosses it to the floor, and—

All the light in her face is snuffed out. She looks up at Hawke, lips parted, something akin to horror filling her eyes. “What—Hawke, what _happened_?”

With Isabela’s fingers fire-hot on her skin, the ropy scar from chest to waist burns like it hasn’t burned in years. Hawke stares down at the incomprehensible: Isabela’s calloused brown fingertips against the pale skin and the silver scar. Swallowing hard, Hawke looks back up at Isabela and tries to smile. “I got stabbed, obviously.”

“You look… you look like you should be dead.”

“You should see the other guy.”

“What happened?” Isabela repeats.

Hawke shifts, more self-conscious of the scar than she’s ever been. “After you left,” she says, uncertain, “the Qunari kept looking for the Tome. They thought you had it. I told them you didn’t, which pissed them off, but not as much as it did when I told the Arishok I’d kill every last one of them before they made it out of Kirkwall if they went after you. So he tried to kill me first. Did an absolutely terrible job, though.”

She skips the details: the fact that he very nearly pulled it off, the weeks where she couldn’t walk and the months where she couldn’t lift her sword arm, the nightmares she still can't shake. But Isabela looks like she’s just seen it all unfold before her eyes. “Hawke,” she rasps, “Hawke, if I had known—”

For years, Hawke’s been telling the same unfunny joke in an attempt to convince her friends that she wasn’t still hung up on a certain runaway pirate: the sword in the stomach wasn’t nearly as bad as the knife in the back. But there, watching Isabela’s eyes glint with tears, Hawke wants to swallow all those words back again. For the first time, it occurs to her that they're both entitled to a fair share of sorrow. “You weren’t supposed to know,” she says. “It felt more heroic when you didn’t know. Now I just feel like an idiot.”

“You are an idiot.” Isabela touches Hawke’s cheek, looking like she’s face-to-face with a ghost. “You’re a damned fool. I never asked you to be a hero for me.”

“But it made for a better story.”

Isabela responds with only a breath before sliding her hands down to Hawke’s shoulders and pushing her back into the pillows. All the air slips out of Hawke’s lungs in one disbelieving exhalation as Isabela settles on top of her, a sensation almost too vivid to be true. And then Isabela’s lips graze against the top of the scar and a lightning heat coils in Hawke’s belly, beginning below Isabela’s mouth and then blooming out, threatening to consume her. 

“A damned fool,” Isabela repeats, kissing along the scar, down Hawke’s stomach to her waist. Even after all these years apart, Hawke knows her well enough to recognize an apology.

It’s never been like this with them—this slow, sacred, fumbling duet. Hawke is acutely aware of her own body, of Isabela’s body against her, in a way that she’s never been before. When Isabela’s fingers brush her waist, Hawke’s whole body aches, and Isabela’s tight against her when once she’d been as loose as a wave. They've forgotten what it meant to fit together.

“Please,” Hawke breathes, just barely pressing her fingertips into Isabela’s hips, “please, let me.” And when Hawke tries to lift herself upright, Isabela moves with her with a startling readiness, sliding onto her back and drawing Hawke on top of her. 

Isabela settles one hand on the back of Hawke’s neck, fingers tangling in her hair, and draws Hawke in to the crook of her neck. When Hawke kisses her there, as tentative as a breath, she can feel Isabela shaking her head.

“Make me feel something, sweet thing,” Isabela says, her voice crackling beneath the bravado. “Let me hurt for you, this time around.”

Hawke feels dizzy; she kisses the freckles on Isabela’s shoulder, counting each one, feeling more like herself with each kiss and each breath. “I don’t want that.”

“I do,” Isabela says. She presses Hawke against her, harder, until Hawke gives in and kisses Isabela with all the hunger of a woman five years starved. She grabs her like she might dissipate from underneath her—like it’s all still make-believe.

Hawke scrapes her teeth along Isabela’s collarbone, digs her fingers into her shoulders and her hips and her ass, every inch of her, roaming over her body like a wildfire. She lingers at her breasts until Isabela’s arched and trembling underneath her, until she can grind her thigh between Isabela’s legs and feel the slick, sweet heat of her. Only then—only when she can’t wait another instant—does Hawke drag her way down over Isabela’s body, kissing her stomach and her hips and her thighs. When Hawke pauses for one moment, lifting her head to soak in the sight, Isabela knots her fingers in Hawke’s hair and pushes her down between her legs.

Hawke draws Isabela closer, grip sliding from her thighs to her ass, holding her steady even as Isabela’s legs clench tight and her hold tightens on Hawke’s hair with the first drag of her tongue. It’s like the first time and the last time all at once, Hawke thinks, part fear and part hope, all fire and smoke. And then she can’t think about anything at all apart from the taste of Isabela, lightning on her tongue.

But at last Isabela groans, arches upwards, and grabs at Hawke’s hand on the sheets beside her. “I want to feel you inside me,” she gasps, dragging Hawke’s hand down between her legs, pushing Hawke’s head away with her other hand.

When Hawke's hand curls against her, Isabela doesn’t draw her own hand away; it hovers there, cupped over Hawke’s, and when Hawke slips one finger inside of her, Isabela’s finger follows hers. She crushes Hawke’s palm against her; she sets the rhythm, a driving, harsh, heartbeat pace that seems to shake the very walls themselves.

The first cry sounds like a sob, but when Hawke looks at her, Isabela’s face is alight with something close to ecstasy. “Harder,” she pleads. “More.” And Hawke—Hawke, who’s only ever wanted to give Isabela the entire world and more—gives her everything she asks for.

When Isabela comes, she seems to crumble underneath Hawke, ripping them both apart in the process: Hawke collapses half on top of her, mouth open in some silent cry of her own, hot sparks at the edge of her vision and her body screaming in an ache between release and reprimand. It’s a long moment before the ringing in Hawke’s ears dissipates enough for her to hear Isabela’s voice, soft whimpers into Hawke’s shoulder.

“Hawke,” she repeats like a ritual, with all the tenderness of a lover, like nothing Hawke's ever heard before. “Hawke, Hawke,” again and again, until it melts into just a sound that means nothing at all. Hawke wraps her up in shaking arms and cradles her to her chest, like they could stretch the moment into forever. 

But the rest—the rest is familiar. After an eternity, Isabela untangles herself from Hawke and draws herself up into something untouchable. For the first time all night, Hawke recognizes the steps of their old game. “You should leave,” Isabela says. And Hawke, who’d dared for one moment to imagine another five years, another decade of this, of _them_ , looks down at her empty palms.

“That’s it, then?”

Isabela nods. She brushes one stray curl back behind her ear; Hawke’s fingers itch to do it for her. “We’ve said goodbye. It would be a mistake to say anything else.”

Like every time before, Hawke obeys, unsure of how to argue even if she wanted to. There’s so much left to say, she thinks. Books and books of it. She'd been a fool to think anything else—to think that a memory could ever match a woman as impossible as Isabela. But she dresses anyway, doing her best not to stare at Isabela, still sitting there with her arms wrapped around her knees. 

But when she makes it to the doorway, Hawke pauses. She can’t say it all, but she can start. Somebody has to. “I loved you, you know. Back then.”

Isabela sits statue-still, staring at her own hands. “What about now?”

Without the doorknob in her hand holding her upright, Hawke’s not sure she could stay on her feet. She licks her dry lips. “I’ve never stopped, not for a minute. I couldn’t if I tried.”

At last, Isabela turns her eyes on Hawke again. She shakes her head. “You’re a fool for that.”

“I know.”

“After everything—”

“I’d do it all again,” Hawke says. She lifts her shoulders in a weary shrug. “Every second of it.”

“I believe it,” Isabela says, with a smile so melancholy that Hawke can hardly bear it. “You’re the reckless hero type, and I’m the coward who runs off and lets the hero die on my behalf.”

“Except that I'm not dead, and we're both here. That complicates things, doesn't it?”

Isabela presses her palms into her eyes. When she pulls them back, a wet sheen still glitters in the corners. “I never wanted to hurt you, Hawke. Not ever. It was never you I was running from.”

Hawke shifts. “Are you going to leave now, then, or will you be here tomorrow?”

“What do you think?” Isabela asks. And it’s not meant to be a question, but Hawke can’t help but answer, all aching heart and trembling fingers and enough fear to pass for courage.

“I think you should stay. I don’t think we’re done, not yet. I want to _talk_ to you, really talk, the way we used to. I want to tell you everything, I want to hear everything, I want to make you laugh. Because you were my best friend, Isabela. You were my best friend and I loved you.” She hesitates and swallows back all the sorrow threatening to choke her. “Can’t we stop running, just for a little while?”

Isabela doesn’t answer, not until Hawke turns to leave. But when she does, her voice is steady again: “I’ll be here for a few more days. The room’s already paid for, so—I’ll be around. Come find me.”

Hawke should know better than to believe her. But she does. And if Isabela disappears again—well, Hawke thinks, the heart is a compass. She’d wait another five years if that’s what it takes. She’d wait a lifetime.

Hawke makes her way back down the creaking stairs and pays for a room for the week.

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally started for a prompt, i think?? (years ago, when there was no shortage of hawke/isabela prompts!) i'm in the process of trying to finish my old bits and pieces, so i found the beginning of this and... turned it into smut. haa. thank you for reading if you've made it here, there's nothing that makes me happier than people still showing up for this ship, i adore each and every one of ya <3


End file.
